111: He never gets no rest 'cause she's playing all night

I'm pretty sure I need a haircut.

I've not had one since early or mid-July. I've gotten fairly shaggy and it's about time to put an end to it.

Mom's quietly freaking out. The dude who had been renting our spare room skipped out on her. Go figure. On top of that, the whole neighbourhood's been re-zoned so we need an inspection before we can take on a new boarder, and mom's positive our house would fail. I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me. In the car on the way to the GO station, she listed a few of the thing's she'd figure on doin.g Fix the smoke detectors. Move Brandon's bed so they wouldn't know it's a bedroom, just a computer room. Pick up the loose papers around the basement. She's obsessed with those papers. She's convinced that having them near electrical wires is a recipe for disaster, like they're gonna combust. I'm not ruling it out because electrical fires happen and paper is flammable, but all the same, the risk seems minimal to me. Mom's kinda always been pretty insane as far as fear of fire, pretty irrational. She fixates on things like the papers on the ground (they're not budging.) I think it's something in her troubled childhood. Her dad was kinda a weird guy, and not in a fun way. More in a compulsive gambler and associating with odd shady characters way.

I got to the station and waited on the platform. As it fills up, the older woman stands in front of me, to the side. I see her take out an iPhone. I watch, curious, since I've never seen one of these miracle-devices up close. I watch her scroll through her musical selections and was stunned when she landed on her pick. This woman, who was at least 40 and maybe 50 (it gets hard to judge sometimes, I say that to compliment her as a potential 50-year-old who looks in her 40's.) ended up listening to Nicotina (She's All That) by Big Sugar, a song I had just recently added to my own iPod, and not a band I imagined as having much of a middle-aged professional woman fanbase.

I'm a bit of a spy, an eavesdropper. After I took my seat on the train, I was joined by a man and a woman. He was in his 40's, she in her 20's. They were talking already like they were good friends but he actually introduced himself by name right in front of me. I wondered how they had started talking. He appeared to maybe be hitting on her, but was wearing a wedding ring. I turned off my iPod so that I could hear their conversation, but made sure not to look. I still found it odd, anyhow, as they had an involved conversation about their work and their lives in Oakville.

I sat catatonic through the bulk of the morning, paying vague attention to the notion of non-deductive argument in philosophy seated next to that one girl who looks way too much like someone else I know. In narrative, I drifted in and out of sleep as well, but Prof. Cobb said something that stuck to me, although it had nothing to do with slavery. He mentioned that you never remember what you learn in University, only how you learned; basically, the whole thing, is learning about learning. It seems obvious, but I don't know. It's something to think about.

After lunch was Film study; a Russian/Cuban communist propaganda epic called I Am Cuba. It was pretty heavy-handed and melodramatic but pretty impressive as far as film analysis goes for its editing techniques and long takes.

Lastly was poetry. We did a little workshopping. The piece I came up with didn't really hit hard nor inspire much revision advice. I don't know. I liked it at the time but have grown less fond of it. Reading it out loud, it felt pretty minor. I have a bit of a tendancy to under-write, which comes off less stunning as a good over-written poem, it's also easier to hide if the piece is of lower quality. Anyway, it didn't inspire much talk one way or the other. This, by the way, is a different poem from the one I mentioned in an earlier post.

After making my way to the subway, walking with a girl from class I kinda know (as much as one can be known after only a few weeks of one class,) I met up with Ryan at Union. I showed him the arcade, he was fairly impressed. When we got our seats, he had his feet up on the seat across, but before we pulled out, some ladies came by to take the seat. Now naturally you put your feet down, anybody would do that. But this lady made a thing out of it. She walked up and said something along the lines of, "Okay, uh-uh, footsies down." Like she was his kindergarten teacher or something. It's pretty rude to talk to a stranger who is a grown person as though they were a retarded child. I gave 'em the stink-eye for a while before losing interest and turning to a crossword puzzle.

After a lengthy wait on the bus, I got home and had an amazing steak. The kind of meat that made me wish I said grace before meals. I've sorta been bummin' around the house all evening since then.

That's all for tonight. We can all be good.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto